Life in an 'axis of evil' country

The Iran I encountered is on the cutting edge of developments in reproductive science.

I recently returned from a trip to Lebanon, the UAE and Iran - what most Americans would consider a journey into the heart of darkness, a veritable "axis of evil". In fact, the trip was far from perilous, and I was treated as an honoured guest in every setting. However, given the American daily diet of fearsome media discourses about the Middle East, particularly Iran, it was difficult to convince relatives, including my 80-year-old mother, that it was safe for me, a mother of two young children, to travel to that part of the world.

I have travelled widely and lived with my family for extended periods of time in Egypt, Lebanon, and the UAE. It saddens me that so few Americans will ever come to know the delights of the Middle East as my family and I have.

Relations between the United States and the Middle East have never been so poor nor have the travel restrictions been so considerable. Obtaining a visa to Iran, even for the purposes of academic exchange, is not easy. It requires an invitation from an accredited Iranian academic institution, then weeks of waiting for a visa, which, once issued in Tehran, must be physically obtained through the Pakistani embassy in Washington, DC.

Similarly, there is a near "travel ban" on the entry of Iranian academics to our country. In order to apply for a visa to the US, Iranians must travel to a third country. This involves two trips (one to apply for the visa at a US embassy and then to pick it up), as well as a six- to eight-week waiting period while the applicant's name is "cleared" by the Washington office.

Obviously, the icy relations between the US and Iran are being fuelled by the two regimes currently in power, which are battling over Iran's right to gain nuclear technology through the enrichment of uranium. This test of wills - and the potential for US military intervention - over a Middle Eastern country's right to develop and use a powerful (and potentially dangerous) form of scientific technology is quite important on a number of obvious levels.

What fascinates me, however, is perhaps less obvious to most Americans. Namely, Iran is no simple "medieval theocracy". Rather, it is a modern, science-venerating society, in which technological innovations are occurring in many realms.

Unique conference

Indeed, the topic of technological innovation was what took me to Iran. The Avesina Research Institute in association with the Law and Political Science Faculty of Tehran University sponsored a unique two-day conference on the subject of "Gamete and Embryo Donation" in in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). As a scholar working on the social dimensions of the burgeoning IVF industry in the Muslim world, I was one of only four Western scholars, including two Americans, invited to speak at the conference.

Despite being a non-Muslim American, I was asked to speak to the Shiite Muslim audience about religious and social attitudes toward gamete and embryo donation in the Sunni Muslim world, as described in my recent book on Egypt (Local Babies, Global Science: Gender, Religion, and In-Vitro Fertilisation in Egypt).

In a lecture hall packed with Iranian academics, lawyers, physicians and mullahs in their turbans and robes, I rose to the podium in my long coat and headscarf to speak about Islam, IVF and local religious moralities in the Arab world.

I told the audience - including scores of young Iranian female university students - about the Sunni fatwas (religious rulings) that have effectively banned any form of third-party gamete donation (of sperm, eggs, embryos or uteruses). Iran, however, is a Shiite Muslim society. Unlike the Sunni clergy, the Shiite value a form of individual religious reasoning known as ijtihad. Thus, in the Shiite world, there are divergent opinions about the religious morality of gamete donation.

In short, Iran is currently a country to watch on many levels. It is the site of an award-winning population programme, in which a comprehensive family planning programme includes the encouragement of vasectomies.

As a result, the country has experienced one of the sharpest fertility declines ever recorded. The level of education particularly that of girls has increased significantly as about 62 per cent of university students are female.

In addition, the Iranian clergy have approved organ transplantation and sex-change operations. The Ministry of Health is coping openly with its drug-related HIV/Aids epidemic through innovative needle-exchange and rehabilitation programmes.

Stem-cell science has emerged as a byproduct of the active IVF programmes in the country. And infertility has been placed on Iran's reproductive health and family planning agenda, one of the few examples in the world where IVF is partially state- subsidised.

Cutting edge

These developments convince me of the need to recognise the "high-modern" nature of Iran, which is currently on the "cutting edge" of developments in reproductive science and technology. It also bespeaks the need to de-vilify - indeed, de- demonise - the Shiite Muslim clergy, who are condoning these various innovations, but who are generally represented as backward and fanatical in the Western media.

The Iran I encountered is far from backward. On the streets of Tehran, where I visited restaurants, markets, and the new high-tech mall complexes cropping up around the mountain-ringed cityscape, modernity is everywhere.

Although my visit to Iran was very brief, I came away with a new appreciation of Iran as a country with a deep history, a rich culture and a bright and motivated cadre of professionals and intellectuals who are moving Iran forward into the future. Unfortunately, the American media do not seem to be interested in these kinds of science stories. What we know about Iran as a scientific society is limited to discussions of nuclear weapons. What we are told about Iran as a nation is its "axis of evil", pariah status in US foreign policy.

I would argue that such fear-mongering is very unwise. It is leading to closed minds, closed embassies, restricted visas, travel bans and demeaning airport luggage searches for those of us who overcome these travel restrictions.

 As one of the relatively few Americans who have journeyed to an "axis of evil" country in recent years, I can say with some certitude that Iran is simply not what average Americans think it is. When the customs official at the Detroit International Airport asked me why I had been "over there", I told him it was for an academic conference. Then he asked, "And they didn't behead you?," to which I replied, "No, they served me delicious food". He retorted, "But you never know what was in it ( ie the food)", to which I responded, perhaps too flippantly, "Probably uranium". Fortunately, he returned my passport and let me proceed to baggage claim, where I retrieved my two gorgeous Persian carpets.

- Marcia C. Inhorn is a professor of medical anthropology at the University of Michigan, where she holds joint appointments in the School of Public Health, Programme in Women's Studies, and Department of Anthropology. She also directs UM's Centre for Middle Eastern and North African Studies.